


Leaving on a High

by Tsume_Yuki



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Rigel Black Chronicles - Fandom
Genre: Female Harry Potter, Gen, Harry and Archie are cute cousins, Inspired by The Rigel Black Chronicles, Post Ruse Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:21:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26932807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsume_Yuki/pseuds/Tsume_Yuki
Summary: "Do you regret it?"
Relationships: Harriet Potter | Rigel Black & Arcturus "Archie" Black
Comments: 14
Kudos: 156
Collections: Rigel Black Exchange Round 2





	Leaving on a High

**Author's Note:**

  * For [canvasoforange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/canvasoforange/gifts).



“Do you regret it?”

Sitting in the run-down room they’d rented at Lamia Lodge and wearing another’s face, Arcturus Black eyed his cousin, memorising her face. Her true face, for as long as it would last. Soon enough, she would be taking another dose of modified Polyjuice, only with a different hair this time. One plucked from the first muggle girl a few years older than them that they’d passed in the street. They would be disguised again all to soon, Harry with her potion, Archie with his metamorphmagi abilities. He wasn’t looking forward to it. But, in the cluster-fuck fallout that had occurred at the end of the Triwizard Tournament, there was little else for them to do other than disappear. Go to ground, vanish into the ether, to be anywhere other than beneath the chilling fury of Lord Riddle’s wrath.

“Regret the Tournament?” Harry repeated, running one hand through her hair and grimacing at the tangles and knots it got caught on. Her eyes were now that vivid, blistering green he could recall from their childhood, the very colour they’d always been before they had begun this deception.

Now, they were hiding in the Lower Alleys, secreted away in a vampire-owned business as Aurors tore apart the country looking for them. Archie was unsure if Uncle James was one of them or if the man had already resigned. He didn’t want to know in truth, not when the thought of it might hurt Harry.

“No, the whole thing,” Archie corrected, scratching at the back of his neck, one leg stretched out before him, the other bent near to his chest so that he could hug it close. They were both sitting atop the same bed, the covers almost painfully straight beneath them and only creased where they had clambered atop the bed a half hour ago. No words had been spoken between then, nothing shared as they had both sat and just absorbed the scope of everything that had happened.

It had been bloody lucky he’d come to the final show, to watch as ‘Rigel Black’s fiancée’ would have been expected to.

Now, the whole world knew it wasn’t true, knew that Rigel Black was an imposter -later identified as Harriet Potter and thus, outing exactly where the real Arcturus Black had been- and that they had been fooled.

Harry hadn’t been in a position to witness the potent shock on Riddle’s face before biblical rage had overtaken it, but Archie had been. Someday, perhaps he’d be able to share that memory with her.

“It got a lot trickier than I expected it to,” Harry admitted, one hand running through the half curls of her hair, still sheered short to the length Rigel Black had worn it. “I’d do it all again though. You?”

Harry’s admittance had been whispered lowly, a soft confession before the primordial forces that lingered in the air around them. Archie reckoned he could almost feel fate pressing its weighty pressing upon his shoulders, a hammer blow that told him all was not over yet. That his part in this life had yet to be played to its fullest.

He thought of AIM, of the challenges that had come his way while training as a healer. Thought of Hermione and her steady friendship, one he’d only be able to pray he hadn’t ruined with the discovering of their deception. Perhaps she would understand that the ruse had existed long before their friendship did. Archie hoped it was so.

“No. If I’d known how it’d all go down at the start, what I’d get out of it, I’d still do it all again,” he admitted, giving up the pretence of distance between them a moment later.

Archie crawled up the bed to plant himself besides Harry, throwing one arm over her shoulders to allow her to rest her head against his own, his cheek pressing to the crown of her skull a moment later. They’d not really had much physical contact, had they? Neither of them had been able to afford to get close to another, not until it was summer and they had gone back to playing their actual selves.

He had spent more time as a Potter than he had a Black throughout the last few years.

“I saved Draco in first year,” Harry recounted, the slow expansion of her ribcage as she inhaled beside him pressing against his own side, “and that might not have happened if I weren’t there. No offense, Arch.”

“None taken, Cuz. Not everyone can break the laws of magic like you can.”

Harry pinched him in the side for that remark but Archie gainfully ignored it, waiting for her to continue.

“I don’t know if anyone else could have dealt with Riddle’s shade. I’m a Parselmouth, so I could get down into the Chamber and back out. And I’m glad that there wasn’t anyone else at the mercy of Pettigrew. Same with Riddle’s Tournament, I guess.”

“And hey,” Archie chirped, elbowing her in the side as he sat up straighter, forcing a smile onto his face. “You’ve gone and proved the worth of halfbloods, killed the marriage law before Riddle could shove it through and helped who knows how many muggleborns with that damn deal you made with him.”

“We’re leaving on a high.” Harry’s agreement rang through the air around them, her breathing slowing ever so slightly. They would both need their sleep for the slog ahead; building a new life in the Lower Alleys as two muggleborns immigrated from America, a brother and sister. Archie could do a brilliant American accent and Harry’d pick it up quick enough, he was sure. The hardest part-

“I’m going to have to not brew for a long while, aren’t I?” Harry questioned, skull knocking against Archie’s jaw as the boy yawned.

“Probably. And I won’t be able to pass myself as a healer. It’s a damn good thing we’re both thumping good at magic, isn’t it?”

Harry laughed, the sound not the light airy thing he’d heard at the rare social event he’d actually gone to in the past few years, but it was undeniably a sound that could only come from his cousin.

“Leo’ll know it’s me by my magic, you know?”

“I gathered as much with what you said about him before,” Archie said, snuggling a little closer to the girl who might as well be his sister, “and I trust you when you say he won’t rat us out.”

Four hours later, Harry necked the modified Polyjuice, the one she’d been planning on taking after the end of the Tournament before the ruse had been exposed, only with a different hair than she'd intended to use. Instead of his near fifteen -older than fifteen- year old cousin, an eighteen year old redhead sat before him. The colour was too deep to be classified as Weasley red, leaned more towards Aunt Lily’s colouring in truth. Maybe Harry had gone for that girl’s hair because of similarities?

It only took a moment of thought to adapt the same features, changing a few ever so slightly. A marginally flatter nose, more freckles, eyes that were a cheery hazel instead of clear blue. But close enough to pass as siblings.

“How do I look?” Archie asked, spreading his arms wide and Harry laughed, the sound soft but nowhere near as depressed as he’d have expected. It probably helped that they have each other.

“Like an irritating younger brother. Should we talk names?”

Three days later, Bernadette ‘Ettie’ and Benjamin ‘Bennie’ Miller sat down at the Dancing Phoenix, across from a bemused King of Rogues to whom they were being introduced for the first time, now that he was finally free from having to deal with the sudden influx of Aurors into his neck of the woods.

Lionel Hurst looked between them both, cheek ticking like it wanted to lift his lips in a smile but couldn’t allow it to happen.

Ettie and Bennie smiled at him anyway. 


End file.
